Is a datacentre considered an ISP in this respect? Between vpns and just remote desktoping into a VM, it seems trivial to circumvent to real criminals while being a privacy nightmare to the rest of the population. There is a probability 1.000 that this data will be abused.
What I want to know is: what happened? I always think of this event 70 years ago [0]:
> "police obtained the fingerprints of every male aged 16 and over who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn on the night of 14-15 May to compare their fingerprints to those left at the crime scene by the perpetrator. ... a milestone in the history of forensic science; this being the first time a mass fingerprinting exercise had been implemented to solve a murder in the United Kingdom."
> Just weeks prior to the execution of Peter Griffiths, all the fingerprint records obtained from individuals who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn between 14 and 15 May were publicly destroyed [emphasis my own] in a mass pulping exercise at a local papermill. Several local journalists were present to record the destruction of the records.
Why was society so vigilant about giving data that might be abused to authorities, and now, when the data is so much more vast and powerful, no one seems to care?
Because it's abstract. The people aren't _actively_ having to do anything, such as hand over their records - it's happening away from them. It's hard to connect with abstract.
It's easier for people to connect with the reason _for_ doing it. Stop the terrorists, it may happen to you, etc. But the other way round is harder because it's invisible and you can live your life without caring. Even the warnings fall on deaf ears because "come on, you're being irrational" or "meh, doesn't affect me".
It is far easier and more enjoyable to believe that Britain is peace- and freedom-loving, which is the continual message from the tabloids, than to keep track of these developments and their implications.
If so, why were they not apathetic and ill-informed a mere then, not even 100 years ago? Certainly people of the time thought Britain was peace- and freedom- loving then, too.
Complexity. A policeman taking a literal print of your body is far simpler and more direct than "big data" and so on.
Remember that most computer users are hazy at best about whether `natwest.my-account.co.uk` is a phishing scam. There isn't the necessary baseline of informed opinion to have a reasonable discussion about this kind of snooping.
In part possibly because it was a few years after WW2 where millions of allied soldiers thought against Fascism which was enforced via secret police (Gestapo).
It's easier to stand against something when there is something stand against - The end of the cold war meant the west didn't have a "At least we don't do <insert Stasi tactics">" to oppose itself to.
Now we routinely do things that would have made the Stasi wet themselves in excitement.
If I understand correctly, fingerprints were quite the nerdy technology back then. They're not beep boops in a data center, but it takes a high degree of nuance to argue against "if you didn't commit a crime, you have nothing to worry about."
Neither does this specific "nerd". I honestly have yet to be convinced; a lot of it seems very similar to fear mongering and illogical with the arguments being very nebulous. Maybe I have yet to sit down and flesh it out with a deep privacy advocate.
I understand the need for wire tapping and for the police to be able to do their job. What I don't understand is the no need for a warrant. Also the list of public bodies who can access this data includes the health and safety executive, the pensions regulator, the environment agency.
I see no reason why bodies like this can have access to sensitive data about individuals without requiring a warrant.
Not that long ago the most powerful and free country in the world was engulfed in chaos after the killing of George Floyd.
The event was polarising and you had your anti-rioter camp and anti-police camp. It should not be hard to see how there would have been direct chains of command on either side which could facilitate data misuse.
If you want a hard example, look at Hong Kong: protestors getting arrested via all manner of tracking, but also police's family being doxxed by protestors.
The big problem is that our modern legal code is so convoluted that people regularly accidentally commit crimes[0][1] but aren't aware of it, leaving a big gap for inconsistent enforcement (mostly against those who dare challenge authority or the authorities are biased against). There's reasonable evidence that the FBI or rogue agents within the FBI tried blackmailing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide.[2] J. Edgar Hoover was collecting a stash of blackmail information on politicians.
I'm very unlikely speak up enough to become a target, but the next Dr. King, the next Snowden, the opponents of the next Trump or next J. Edgar Hoover are going to have big problems if privacy continues on its present course.
Privacy isn't currently a big problem for the average citizen in our society, but it's very important fat-tail event insurance to have in the future. By the time you realize you need to worry about privacy, it's probably already too late. History has shown liberal democracies are at best metastable (all governments tending toward authoritarianism if not actively maintained) and whistleblowers are an important stabilizing force.
I wonder if it's to do with the physicality of older data collection methods. In your example, the data collection method was very clear: getting your fingers black and ordered to perform an action with them by someone in uniform. The use of that data is even clearer: the potential for being executed.
It is very different to the newer methods where you don't necessarily know what is being collected or what it is being used for.
I saw discussed online the other day some alarmist comments about the government wanting to know "what your bedroom activities are" in response to receiving the census letter in the post and seeing a mention of sexuality. Putting aside the ignorance of conflating sex with sexuality, I thought it was interesting how hard this problem is for most people to deal with.
That same person no doubt uses multiple mainstream social media sites, has browsers full of tracking cookies, uses loyalty cards and has their data collected, sold and used for all sorts of things. But it's the letter through the front door, for, of all things, a function of society that is over 200 years old, that causes alarm.
It's a good observation. Not unrelated I suspect io why society no longer cares about basic personal freedoms in the wake of covid panic. Basic private peaceful assembly with your family is now or recently has been a civil and in some places criminal offence.
This often makes me think, what would happen if the authorities suddenly instituted something that actually wasn't trivial to bypass?
There are smart people working for them, why do they keep bringing in this stuff that doesn't actually have an effect against the baddies?
Is it possible that they are self-sabotaging because they actually realize they don't want to live in the world they are rushing headlong towards? Or is that giving them too much credit?
Those trying to communicate will always have the advantage thanks to cryptography. It gives you many way to secure and obfuscate communications, even in plain view.
I disagree. Surveillance isn’t limited to breaking encryption — the Stasi would put cameras in water cans to spy on funerals, drill holes in walls while you were out to spy on you in your own apartment, etc. — and the tech for meatspace surveillance has only gotten smaller and cheaper since the fall of the Wall. Laser microphones in particular are something a high school student could reasonably make with a pocket-money budget.
> It works best with a small hardware extension (a small speaker/headphone) to focus the sound on the mic, making it silent its surroundings. An idea how to build it is found in the Menu.
Great when you know where the microphone is but can’t leave the area for a private chat; not so useful when the microphone is any nearby substance that reflects some wavelength and which vibrates enough when exposed to sound that the reflected light can be decoded.
They won't, for quite a while because it's good strategy. Don't let your opponent know they're trapped until the very end.
Had the government gone all-in trying to stop piracy, or drugs, back in the day they'd have kicked off this privacy awareness years ago, when they were much less ready. Now they've had a chance to gear up and get behind the terrorist attacks as they happen with stories about the chat clients they use, or how their iphones kept police from reading their texts, etc. With a little more of this by the time they do crack down not only will the tech be much more refined but there'll be a properly trained group of people who defend the censorship on safety, or moral, or whatever grounds, to keep the heat away from those who made the decisions.
The idea that the powers aren't actually useful is a completely false meme that techies tell each other because they imagine criminals to behave in a particular way, which is incorrect.
Police powers are routinely shown to be useful in actual criminal investigations.
This is politics, who cares about a few people doing bad stuff...
If the shit hits the fan, you want to know the political stance of all the citizens, and who the troublemakers will be, if something large is happening. ...and for that, it's enough to know which political sites they're visiting, even if you don't know the content itself.
Or, the reason nothing has happened as a result is because nothing serious happened in the "insurrection". I'm suggesting this as a foreigner in a democratic country (a well regarded example country even), a fact I mention to dispel the concept that I'm crypto-republican or even socially (as opposed to fiscally) conservative. I watched 2020 in America through independent videos and through your news, the two of which are very-tenuously connected.
Very few of the capitol-riot criminals (because I totally agree that they committed a bunch of crimes, and are absolutely criminals) were armed, even with the makeshift weapons seen in the previous year's street riots. And they weren't going to hurt anyone because the capitol police and the secret service were preparing the evacuation while Trump was still talking blocks away. Not because they legitimately feared a coup, but because it's just general safety protocol to not sit around and wait for a demonstration or a riot to walk up to you.
Following that you saw the Democrats care as hard as they could. Some are still caring now. But the message didn't resonate with anyone other than their base - it cost them moderate democrat support and hardened moderate republicans again them. They largely stopped because the voters said "It's a non-issue, we don't believe it as told". (I present this as a self-evident fact, despite having seen poles supporting it, because we all know nobody stops beating on an effective drum.)
Anything any large organization does is not about absolutes but about increasing or reducing the probability of something in a population. The small few VPNers can be dealt with later.
Also this is done in america for commercial reasons to sell to adtech, like t-mobile recently or comcast for quite a while and probably all the others.
